Southborough's Fucci uses her noodle to start pasta company

Monday

Aug 22, 2016 at 12:01 AM

Bob Tremblay @BobTremblay_MW

SOUTHBOROUGH – How addictively good is the pasta from Allora Pasta Co.? So glad you asked.

One customer became so hooked on the noodles that he placed 20 orders a few weeks ago and has already consumed the entire batch. “He told me he doesn’t even share it with his family,” says Allora’s owner Cameo Fucci. “I sent him 10 more orders yesterday. I hope this will last him awhile.”

Don’t count on it. All of Allora’s pasta has that irresistible freshness factor in its favor as every noodle is handcrafted by Fucci, who learned the pasta-making trade while working on a farm in Italy.

Fucci has now put those lessons into practice in her family’s kitchen in Southborough, making pasta with the basics: semolina flour, Italian olive oil, salt and water. She then cranks the pasta herself through a pasta machine and then lets it dry for 24 hours. No preservatives are added and Fucci carefully chooses the ingredients used to fill the ravioli. Whenever possible, she uses locally sourced products.

“Good food doesn’t have to be complicated,” says Fucci. “When you use wholesome ingredients and when you truly care about what you’re making, the end result is always going to be something really special.

“I want people to understand what authentic Italian pasta tastes like without having to leave the comfort of their own home. I want people to taste my pasta and feel the love that I put into it.”

That Fucci should get involved in the food business is not surprising. Her mother, Sheila, ran a catering company with Karen McCarthy in Southborough called An Affair to Remember, and her father, Peter, hails from an Italian family where cooking was a religion and Sunday meals a feast.

“My dad made homemade pasta way back when, but when I was younger I never really thought about it. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, cool, pasta,’” Fucci recalls.

After graduating from Algonquin Regional High School in Northborough, Fucci worked in a variety of businesses before landing her first cooking job at Café St. Jorge in San Francisco. “That’s where I really fell I love with the art of cooking,” she says.

After working with children in Nicaragua for the nonprofit Amped for Education, Fucci moved to Maine where she worked at Caffe Prego in Ogunquit. “The chef there, Donovan Fraser, was the first person who believed in me as someone who could be a chef,” she says. “That was inspiring to me. He taught me so much.”

In a phone interview, Fraser calls Fucci “absolutely amazing … She has a vast amount of experience now and the skills, too. I would hire her back here in a heartbeat.”

From Maine, Fucci returned to Massachusetts where she worked in Boston at Yvonne’s, formerly Locke-Ober. “The executive chef there, Juan Pedrosa, is one of my biggest supporters,” she says. As much as I loved working there, Italy was calling my name.”

During a three-month excursion, Fucci first went to Florence. “I stayed a month and a half there, exploring the culinary world and falling in love with everything Italy had to offer,” she says.

From Florence, Fucci worked on a farm for a month and a half in Citta di Castello as a volunteer. “That was where everything started to come together,” she says. “I was making pasta every single day with a woman named Sara Pezzuti, who, with her husband Alessandro, run what essentially is a bed and breakfast, Agriturismo Il Sarale. Everything served there comes from the farm. It’s 100 percent farm to table, and Sara entrusted me to make pasta for the guests. That’s how Allora Pasta came to be, from a small farm in Italy. I wanted to bring that authenticity home. The way I made pasta there is the way I make pasta here.”

Fucci launched Allora in June with the company selling three types of pasta: tagliatelle, maltagliati and ravioli. A 9-ounce bag of tagliatelle costs $6 and provides three to four servings. A 6-ounce bag of maltagliati costs $5 and provides two servings. An 8-ounce bag of ravioli costs $8 and provides two servings. The pasta cooks in 8 to 10 minutes.

It can be ordered online at www.allorapasta.com with shipping confined to Massachusetts. Orders can also picked up at 10 Oregon Road or dropped off locally within a 15-mile radius of Southborough. Fucci also offers pasta-making lessons either at her home or at a customer’s home for $30 a person.

“I always knew I loved food, but pasta was something that meant something to me. It was a way for me to meditate and relax while being creative,” she says.

Her mother, as one might expect, is proud of her. “She just has this drive to explore and she sticks with it,” Sheila Fucci says. “It’s great that she knows what she wants to do at her age.” Cameo is all of 23.

Her daughter returns the compliment, thanking her parents for their support, noting that being able to cook from home saves her money she’d be spending on renting a commercial kitchen elsewhere. Her mother's is a licensed commercial kitchen.

For the future, Fucci says she would like to get her products into retail stores. She would also like to find a commercial space where she could hire one or two employees to help her out as she is now a one-woman show. Her end goal is to open a pasta bar.

“I’m following something I feel passionate about,” says Fucci. “The best part for me is the reaction I get when people tell me how much better my pasta is than anything they’ve ever tasted. That’s what drives me.”

We should add that Fucci, while continuing to make pasta, is returning to Yvonne's on Aug. 29, having been offered a leadership position in the kitchen there by Pedrosa.